1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to facsimile apparatuses capable of transmitting a mixture of electronized images and paper documents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information communication terminals such as (PDA: Personal Digital Assistants) incorporate a application software prepared for PC a so-called soft facsimile (hereinafter referred to as software facsimile) for transmitting images created or edited on an LCD display screen to recipient or displaying images received from recipient""s fax on a screen. Such a software facsimile has an inconvenience of being unable to transmit paper documents at hand.
On the other hand, conventional facsimile apparatuses can receive images from recipient""s fax and print them out by a printer, and scan paper documents and transmit them to recipient""s fax. However, since they usually do not have an LCD display or input device, they have an inconvenience of being unable to create, edit or send images to recipient""s fax.
In order to compensate for the shortcomings of both the software facsimile and normal facsimile apparatuses above, a simple solution could be a plain facsimile apparatus with a scanner and printer, further equipped with an LCD display and touch panel. It is also possible to propose a facsimile apparatus with a software facsimile function such as PDA.
However, in a plain facsimile apparatus which has simply incorporated a software facsimile, both functions remain independent of each other. Thus, while the facsimile apparatus is creating or editing a document on an LCD display screen, it functions as a software scanner and cannot send a paper document set in the scanner. On the contrary, when scanning a document with a scanner and sending the document, the facsimile apparatus functions as a normal facsimile, and thus it cannot send a document created or edited on the LCD display screen.
It is a first objective of the present invention to provide an image transmission apparatus capable of sending, through simple operations, documents created on a screen or scanned documents.
It is a second objective of the present invention to provide an image transmission method capable of sending, through simple operations, documents created on a screen or scanned documents.
It is a third objective of the present invention to provide a computer-readable storage medium capable Of sending, through simple operations, documents created on a screen or scanned documents.
That is, the above objective is achieved by An image transmission apparatus, having image storage section for storing image data, display section for displaying the image data, scanning section for scanning a document and obtaining other image data; and transmission section for transmitting a mixture of the image data and the other image data.
The above objective is also achieved by An image transmission apparatus, having scanning section for scanning a document and obtaining scanned image data, detection section for detecting that the document is set in the scanning start position of the scanning section, image storage section capable of storing image data other than the scanned image data, decision section for judging, when the detection section has detected the document, whether the image data are stored in the storage section; and facsimile transmission section for transmitting, when the decision section has decided that the image data are stored in the storage section, a mixture of the image data and the scanned image data.
The above objective is also achieved by A facsimile apparatus that transmits image data according to a facsimile protocol over a line, having a memory for storing image data, a display for displaying the image data, a scanner for scanning a document and obtaining other image data, and a facsimile communication device for transmitting a mixture of the image data and the other image data.
The above objective is also achieved by A facsimile apparatus that transmits image data according to a facsimile protocol over a line, having a scanner for scanning a document and obtaining scanned image data, a sensor for detecting that the document is set in the scanning start position of the scanner, a memory capable of storing image data other than the scanned image data, a decision device for judging, when the sensor has detected the document, whether or not the image data are stored in the memory; and a facsimile transmission device for transmitting, when the decision apparatus has decided that the image data are stored in the memory, a mixture of the image data and the scanned image data.
The above objective is also achieved by An image transmission method for an image transmission apparatus equipped with a scanning apparatus, having the steps of, storing image data, displaying the image, scanning a document by the scanning apparatus and obtaining other image data, and transmitting a mixture of the image data and the other image data.
The above objective is also achieved by An image transmission method for an image transmission apparatus equipped with a scanning apparatus, having the steps of scanning a document by the scanning apparatus and obtaining scanned image data, detecting that the document is set in the scanning start position of the scanning apparatus, storing image data other than the scanned image data, judging, when the document has been detected in the detecting step, whether or not the image data are stored, and transmitting, when it has been decided in the judging step that the image data are stored, a mixture of the image data and the scanned image data.
The above objective is also achieved by a computer-readable storage medium for storing a program code for instructing a computer having storage section for storing data, display section for displaying the data, scanning section for scanning a document and transmission section for transmitting the data, a program for executing the procedures of writing image data in the storage section, writing other image data in the storage section by making the scanning section scan the document, and reading the image data and the other image data and transmitting a mixture of them.